


From Heaven

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, Angel!Lacey, F/M, Fluff, Golden Lace, Guardian Angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 17:25:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Golden Lace. Gold doesn’t quite know what to make of it when a young woman arrives in his life, claiming to be his guardian angel. The fact she fell out of the sky certainly adds some credibility to the theory.Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: One accidentally falls on top of the other.





	From Heaven

 

Mr Gold had always thought that he was perfectly ordinary. Absolutely nothing weird and wonderful had happened in his life so far, and he was perfectly happy for everything to stay that way.

Therefore, when his perfectly ordinary Tuesday ended with a young woman literally falling out of the sky and landing on top of him, he felt that being rather confused and out of sorts was inevitable.

True, the woman had shouted a warning as she had fallen towards him, but for Gold, a female voice coming from the heavens yelling ‘incoming crash landing!’ was not at all conducive to getting out of the way, and up until the moment that she had landed on him, he had been convinced that he’d imagined the voice.

The first thing that Gold noticed, after he had come back to his senses and found the woman on top of him, was that she was very pretty and had the bluest eyes he had ever seen. The second thing, which probably should have been the first and most important thing, was that he had not hit his head on the doorstep as he went down under her, and he had certainly been expecting a blood-curdling thwack from the moment that he lost his balance.

The third thing that he noticed was that he had not hit his head because it was pillowed against something soft, and that something soft appeared to be the white feathered wings that were enveloping him, sprouting from the young woman’s back.

He blinked, and the wings vanished, his head now resting on cold concrete.

“Sorry about that,” she said brightly. “I did warn you.”

She got up and brushed herself down, seemingly oblivious to Gold still lying on the ground in a state of complete confusion. He still couldn’t quite get his head around what had just happened. A young woman had appeared out of nowhere, fallen out of the sky and landed on him, and he could have sworn that a few seconds ago, she’d had wings.

Finally, he got back to his feet and cleared his throat. The woman, who’d been looking around the back yard of the shop with mild interest, turned back to him.

He had intended to be polite, but all that came out of his mouth was an incredulous: “Who _are_ you?”

“I’m Lacey. Your guardian angel.” She held out a hand, and Gold looked at it as if it was about to turn into a poisonous snake.

Lacey rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you. Honestly, that kind of defeats the object of a guardian angel.”

“You just knocked me over and landed on me,” Gold pointed out.

“That was an accident, and like I said, I did give you warning. It’s not my fault that you chose not to act on it. I’m here to help and advise; I can’t affect free will. Besides, I made sure you weren’t injured, didn’t I?”

Gold remembered being wrapped up in the wings and nodded slowly. He finally took the offered hand and Lacey pulled him to his feet with a strength that he would not have thought possible from her slender frame and slight build.

“So, shall we?”

She indicated the Cadillac and bounced towards it, but Gold remained where he was, rooted to the spot and still not entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing now. Logic told him that he really ought to get in the car and go home, just as he had been planning to do before Lacey had landed in his lap.

Logic also told him that guardian angels dropping out of the sky was not an everyday occurrence and therefore a different course of action might be required. Like checking himself into the nearest medical facility to check that he was not in fact hallucinating as a result of slipping on his own doorstep and cracking his head open. A part of him wondered if any of this was happening at all. Perhaps he was lying bleeding in a heap and Lacey had come to guide him on to the great hereafter.

Of all the things that could be happening, that was the one that startled him the most, and he felt it prudent to check.

“Am I dead?”

Lacey raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Well, you know. Angels descending from heaven and all that. Normally happens towards the end of life.”

She shook her head. “No. You’re not dead. You’ve just been deemed in need of guidance so voila! Here I am.”

Gold scoffed. “I am not in need of any guidance, thank you very much, so you can fly off back to wherever you came from in that regard.” He was still having trouble reconciling the image of the wings wrapped around him, especially now that they were nowhere to be seen. The only evidence he had of their existence were the raised lines on Lacey’s shoulder blades, exposed as they were through her racer-back top. They were almost like scars. It wasn’t the warmest of nights, but despite her skimpy attire, she didn’t seem to be cold.

She gave him a look, as if to say that she simply didn’t believe him.

“Look, I’m not thrilled about this assignment either, you know. I’d just got to the good bit in my book and now I have to come down here and shepherd you about.”

“I do not need shepherding!”

Lacey shrugged. “Not my decision, pal. Now, are you coming, or do I have to hotwire your car and drive off in it to get you to follow me?”

Gold sighed, figuring that following instructions would be better than hanging around to see if she was capable of carrying through on the threat.

“Not exactly angelic behaviour, is it?”

He unlocked the car and Lacey jumped into the passenger seat uninvited as he got behind the wheel.

“I never said I was a very good angel,” she said, and he had to admit that she was correct. “Coming to think of it, that’s probably why they’ve lumped me with you. Punishment for one of my many celestial transgressions.”

Gold pulled out onto the road. There were never usually any people around at this hour; Storybrooke didn’t have all that much in the way of nightlife. Lacey looked rather disappointed by the dark scenery.

“You lot don’t get out much, do you?” she said. “Have you got any decent bars?”

“There’s the Rabbit Hole, although ‘decent’ might be pushing it a little.”

“Well, anything’s better than nothing. We can go there later.”

“I do not frequent the Rabbit Hole,” Gold said sternly. He was just about ready to accept Lacey’s presence in his life without questioning it too much, but he drew the line at her dragging him into insalubrious drinking establishments, no matter how much she thought it might constitute the guidance that she was meant to be giving him. “Can angels even drink?”

“Yup!” Lacey seemed incredibly happy at the prospect. “We can drink, get drunk, get horrific hangovers, the works! Well, we can only do that when we’re down here, of course. Not a lot of hard liquor where we come from. Oh, I can’t wait to get my hands on some tequila.”

Gold didn’t respond. It would have to happen, wouldn’t it? Of all the guardian angels that he could have had, he’d had to end up with the party girl. Whoever it was up there who had paired them together obviously had a sense of humour.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, Lacey was not in fact an angel and she’d been sent from the other place in disguise as a way of torturing him pre-emptively before he even got to hell. Maybe she was designed to send him into an early grave so that he got there quicker.

David Nolan was out walking his dog, and he gave Gold a pleasant wave as the Cadillac passed. Gold didn’t wave back. Not that he ever did, but he was still too caught up in trying to process what on earth (or not on earth) was happening to him to pay much attention to the outside world.

“Can he see you?”

“Who?” Lacey had slipped her feet out of her shoes and curled her feet up under her on the Cadillac’s seat, as if she’d been sitting in it all her life.

“Anyone who’s not me?”

“They can if I want them to. For now it’s just you and me, partner.”

“Perfect. So right now it looks like I’m talking to myself?”

Lacey nodded and gave him a grin, and Gold shook his head with a sigh.

“You know, I’m really not sure how you’re supposed to give me guidance and help me out with whatever it is that you need to help me out with if I’ve been committed for insanity for talking to a woman with wings who isn’t there.”

Lacey just rolled her eyes and didn’t reply. The rest of the journey back to the house passed in a tense silence. Gold still didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to think now, and Lacey wasn’t being very forthcoming. It was as if she had just landed in his life and expected him to know what was what and to go along with it all, without any input on his part.

He glanced sideways at her in the passenger seat. He was certainly going along with it all now. He couldn’t keep up with this capitulation; it would ruin his reputation.

Lacey wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was gazing out of the window.

“It’s a nice town,” she said eventually as they pulled off the main road and up the quiet side street that led to his home. Her voice was wistful almost, and he could tell that the sentiment was genuine.

“Even with its lack of partying facilities?” He shouldn’t have sniped, but at the same time, he couldn’t get a handle on Lacey at all. One moment she was out for tequila and now she was admiring the non-existent scenery. Perhaps it was all part of being an angel.

Lacey nodded. “Yeah. I suppose I can live with a lack of partying facilities for a little while. Is this your place?”

Gold turned into the driveway and parked up in reply.

“It’s pink,” she observed.

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“No. I just didn’t expect it from you, that’s all. Given what I’ve already heard.”

That statement worried Gold. “So how much do you know about me, if you know who I am and know that apparently I need help, although I don’t know who gave you that impression, but you don’t know that I live in a pink house?”

Lacey shrugged. “I only know what I’m told.”

“Very helpful,” Gold growled. He got out of the car and made his way to the front door, unlocking and stepping back to allow Lacey to enter first. She was taking her time in coming inside, just staring around her surroundings for a while. Far from being the bright, bouncy and brash thing that she had been when she had first landed outside the pawn shop, now she seemed different. Apprehensive almost.

“I know that you’re lonely,” she said eventually.

Gold raised an eyebrow. “I can assure you that I am not, and that I really don’t think that I need a tequila-swigging angel as a companion.”

“Well, you’re stuck with me, and I’m stuck with you, so how about we make the best of it?” She paused, and shuffled from foot to foot awkwardly, her bravado gradually waning. “Look, this is my first assignment, ok? I don’t want to fluff it up.”

She looked so young and small, standing in the evening light in front of him. The soft glow of the porchlight was surrounding her, giving him the impression of some kind of heavenly radiance.

“Ok,” he said levelly. “Ok, I’ll play along. You’re my guardian angel sent to guide me in some purpose that neither of us is really sure what it is.”

“You don’t sound convinced, despite the fact that I literally came out of the sky.”

“I’m still not entirely sure that I’m not bleeding out on my own doorstep, or that you didn’t just jump off the roof.” The more time that he’d had to think about it and the more normal Lacey had seemed, the more he was trying to find real world explanations for her appearance.

“What about the wings?” Lacey asked. “We’re not supposed to show them to mortals, but I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Yes. The wings he didn’t have an explanation for.

Before he could give any reply, however, he was rendered completely mute in astonishment as two huge silvery wings sprouted from Lacey’s back. Stretched out, their span must have been several metres.

Gold definitely wasn’t hallucinating. There was no way that his brain could come up with a vision like this of its own accord.

He blinked, and the wings were gone again.

“Do you believe me now?” Lacey asked plainly.

Gold nodded. “Yes. I believe you now. So…” They were still standing in his driveway, and even though Gold was now more convinced that this was really happening to him, he had no idea what he ought to do next. “What now?”

Lacey pondered for a second, and then the cheeky smile she had first shown back by the pawn shop returned. It was a moment of truce for them, the acceptance that no matter what forces had thrust them in each other’s lives, they were going to have to make the best of it and work together.

“Do you have any tequila?”

Gold rolled his eyes. “No tequila, but I have a very good Scotch.”

“Even better.” Lacey hopped up inside the door, and Gold followed her inside.

Having Lacey in his life was certainly not going to be boring.

 


End file.
